How I Wonder
by angel-death-dealer
Summary: What made him smile most was learning that they enjoyed this new parenting job more than they prefered anything else in the world.


"Twinkle, twinkle, little star…how I wonder what you are…"

The sound of soft singing drifted into the conference room through an open window, and Clint looked up from where he was filing his most recent report and went over to the window. This room was three floors up, but the sound of singing appeared to be coming from the window above where the recreation room was. He smiled to himself and abandoned the report, deciding that Coulson really need to give up this idea he had that Clint was capable and willing of completing the endless task.

He went upstairs to the rec room and stood in the doorway, observing the dim lighting in the room that only came from the moonlight shining through the window. On the window ledge in the far corner, directly above where he'd been in the conference room, he saw Natasha with her legs drawn out before her. It wasn't her voice that was singing, nor were her eyes skyward as they usually were, as they were looking down at the source of the music.

The voice was younger, thirty two years younger, to be precice, and belonged to a young boy. Natasha was cradling the boy in her lap, his back against her chest as she draped her arms around him loosely, holding them slumped against each other. In the same position, tucked into the boys lap, was a stuffed version of an Iron Man doll that they'd been trying to take away from him for weeks. Shamefully, the boy loved it.

Alexander, or Alex, was four years old. He was a miniature of his mother in every way but his appearance. He found hiding places where there were none, moved without sound, and once they found him missing for four hours in the S.H.I.E.L.D. base while Darcy had been playing hide and seek with him. He would be a nightmare when they tried to put him in school, considering the time he'd spent running around the various bases with them, but for the time being Darcy was always around waiting (sometimes begging) to spend time with 'her favourite guy ever'. He wasn't sure what they would do when Alex needed to start school, something which involved being more settled than they were right now.

He wanted to leave. He wanted for him and Natasha to take their son and put him in a normal school rather than just get him a tutor. Sure, he liked having the travel and knowing that at the end of each mission he could take his son paddling on the beaches of Thailand or to see the temples in Egypt, and he knew that Natasha enjoyed that too, but he didn't like those moments coming second to getting the job done, and it was getting harder to promise that they would go to the beach (always his favourite) when there was a chance of them not coming back at all. So yes, he wanted them to take their son and dedicate themselves to their own life.

But S.H.I.E.L.D. had bought them together, and for the longest time their entire lives had been about this job. It wasn't exactly easy to find another job when your last employers reference came from a classified agency where your skills and talents were based around professional hits. Not that their son knew that. Dad was Robin Hood and Mom was Lara Croft, thanks to the movies that Darcy let him watch one day.

But Alex had been a huge adjustment to their lives, and not just in the way of trying to get diapers delivered to a S.H.I.E.L.D. base in the middle of the desert. They worked brilliantly together in the field, but now they avoided it wherever possible - both plagued by the idea that if something went wrong it would leave their son without both of his parents. They learned to spend as much time reading 'Goodnight, Moon' as they did reading over their mission statements. They learned that a crying baby with colic around a hungover Tony Stark was amusing for thirteen and a half minutes before something got broken. They learned that crawling babies can get literally anywhere, including in the air ventilation system, and most importantly, they learned that even with their questionable pasts and extreme lack of experience with just about every part of this, they were actually pretty okay at this parenting thing.

What made him smile most was learning that they enjoyed this new parenting job more than they prefered anything else in the world.

"Shh," Natasha whispered, curling herself around her son who giggled in response. "Daddy's watching. If we hide, he won't see us."

She was whispering at a volume where she knew full well that he could hear her, and Alex copied her. "Hide!" he announced in a loud whisper, burying his face in the crook of his mother's elbow.

Clint crossed the room, dramatically dropping behind the couch when Alex looked up to check around him, and then crept on his hands and knees towards them. He stopped when he was at their side, his face right by Alex's hidden one as he hovered silently. His eyes met Natasha's finding her to be amusedly unimpressed with him finding their hiding place. "Oh no," she announced lightly. "Daddy found you."

"No!" Alex argued, looking up and finding Clint's face inches from his own. He laughed as Clint grabbed him with a roar and lifted him high above his head like a trophy of victory. "Daddy!"

Damn if that kid calling him 'daddy' wasn't the best part of his entire life.

"Alex!" he copied, mocking his son's disapproved laughter. "You can't hide from me, kiddo."

"Yea, I can," he stated.

"He's right," Natasha nodded. "It's incredibly easy to hide from you."

He feigned a hurt expression. "Have you always thought this?"

She mused this thought. "None of wanted to hurt your feelings, but since you asked…"

"You wound me," he told her, sitting down on the opposite side of the window ledge and lifting his legs to lay along the length of her own. He wrapped his pyjama-clad son in his arms and the boy curled up straight away. "It can't be bedtime already," he said softly, a locked gaze with Natasha revealing the regret at spending the last few hours of his sons day shut away doing paperwork.

"I'm afraid so," Natasha nodded.

"No," Alex whined.

"Yes," she told him simply. "Didn't you have something to tell Daddy?" she asked him.

Alex nodded, leaning up and using Clint's shoulder for leverage to put his face directly in front of his. "I went toilet with no issa-dents," he announced. He proceeded to squash Clint's cheeks in his tiny hands and announce further, very carefully. "That means I am a very big boy now."

"I'm very proud of you, Alex," he told him, sounding mashed up where he continued to hold his cheeks hostage. "I'm sure Coulson will be incredibly pleased."

He nodded. "Uncle Phil told me to write it up like you do work, and I drew him a picture of how clean everything was."

Clint laughed at the mere idea and looked over his sons head to Natasha. "Coulson's got our son doing write-ups."

She smirked and nodded. "I believe he's pinned it to the bathroom door next to his office."

Alex settled down against Clint again, and held out his arms. "Momma, hug."

She returned the arm gesture. "Come here then."

"No, you come here," he told her with his inherited cheeky grin.

"Momma, hug," Clint copied, holding out his arms too, which made Natasha roll her eyes.

"There's not enough room for us all over there," she told him.

"Come on," Clint groaned. "Hug us!"

"Hug!" Alex insisted.

She went to stand up and move away from the window, but found that Clint's legs were trapping hers down on the ledge. "Clint…"

"As your husband, I command that you hug us with much love and adoration," he said, trying to sound authoritive but losing as soon as she stared him down. "Please," he added.

And with a certain amount of begging and manouvering, they did manage to fit the three of them on one side of the window ledge. Clint turned to Natasha and kissed her softly while their son serenaded them to the tune of 'twinkle, twinkle, little star' once more. When he fell asleep against Clint's chest, they remained there well into the night, unwilling to move from this peaceful spot where they were uninterrupted.

"I love our family," Clint mumbled into the silence, running a hand over his son's hair, perfectly messy matching his own.

"Good," she smiled, placing a kiss on their son's forehead and then leaning against his shoulder. "Because it's about to get bigger."


End file.
